A Beginner’s Guide to Meal Prepping

Finding time to prepare healthy meals every day can be a challenge. It seems like there’s barely any time to shop and cook between work, school, household chores, family plans, and social activities. This is why many people choose to eat takeout, fast food, or packaged microwaveable meals that usually are not very nutritious. But a pattern of unhealthy meals can lead to large nutrient gaps in your diet and possibly unhealthy weight gain.
Meal prepping can be a great tool for you to have healthy, nutrient-rich meals whenever you need them. It’s simple; pick a day to prepare multiple healthy meals that you can enjoy the next day or the entire week. While it does require some planning in advance, you can tailor it to your nutritional needs, cooking ability, food preferences, dietary restrictions, and personal goals.

Here are just a few benefits of meal planning

Healthy meals

The most important benefit of meal prepping is that you can have a nutritious meal that works for your wellness goals whenever you need it. If you need a quick dinner, don’t have time to cook, or need a lunch to take to work, meal prepping can help you keep a habit of eating healthily.

Save time

Planning healthy meals and cooking every day takes up a lot of time. If your weekly schedule is already jam-packed, meal prep can save you time because you’re planning your meals ahead of time and batch cooking them all at once.

Save money

Preparing meals at home will always be more cost-effective than going out to eat. And since meal prep usually means cooking large batches of food, this can also help you save some money on groceries by buying in bulk.

Less stress

An added bonus of meal prepping is knowing that you don’t have to worry about planning meals, extra trips to the grocery store, and cooking throughout the week. Taking these off the daily to-do list can take a load off your mind and your shoulders.

Planning Your Meal Prep

There’s no one way to meal prep, but a little planning goes a long way. Here are a few things to think about before you start meal prepping.

Choose your recipes. A well-balanced meal has a ratio of one-half vegetables and fruit, one-quarter lean protein, and one-quarter healthy grains. Pick a few of your favorite meals with these food groups that you wouldn’t mind eating multiple times a week, with some ideas to change it up in the next section. If this is your first time, you might want to start small with only two or three different meals. This will simplify your grocery shopping and batch cooking.

Choose your cadence. Find the best day of the week to do all your meal prep. You’ll want to find a day with plenty of time for you to batch cook and assemble your meals. Take a look at your calendar and figure out how many days you want to prep meals for. Again, you can start small with 2 to 3 days of meals if you’re still getting used to meal prep. Once you have a routine down, you can try preparing a week’s worth of meals.

Build your grocery list. Once you have your recipes and cadence picked, you can get all the groceries you need in one trip. As you get more familiar with meal prep and find out which recipes work best for you and your family, watch for sales or promos on your frequently used grocery items. You can also stock up on shelf-stable ingredients like rice, pasta, whole grains, beans, and legumes.

Meal Prep Tips

Invest in reusable containers to store your meals. Depending on your meal prep routine, you might want to find containers that can be stored in either the refrigerator or freezer. To get the most out of your containers, choose options that are microwaveable but also freezable with an airtight lid.

Mix and match vegetables, proteins, and healthy grains. If you’re prepping a lot of meals but don’t want to eat the same thing all the time, this is an easy way to create variety in your meals. If your meal has lean protein, vegetables, and healthy grains, try choosing two of your favorite options from each food group to prep. Then create different combinations for each meal using one vegetable, one protein, and one healthy grain.

Try different sauces or dressings. If you’re only able to pick one protein, vegetable, and healthy grain to batch cook for your meal prep, another way to add some variety is by using different sauces and dressings on each. Sauces and dressings can give a meal a completely different flavor profile even if it uses the same proteins, vegetables, and healthy grains.

Add snack portions to your meal prep routine. While whole meals are great, prepped snacks like salads, hard-boiled eggs, sliced fruit, and trail mix are quick and easy to prep. You can add them to an existing meal to change things up or try combining different snacks for a light lunch.

Meal Prep Recipes

Now that you’re ready to start prepping healthy meals for the week, here are some of our favorite foods and recipes for inspiration.

Overnight Oats

Overnight oats are easy to prep and great for breakfast because oats are nutrient dense and contain about 5 grams of protein per half-cup serving. Make a couple of different kinds of overnight oats and keep them in the fridge for an easy breakfast for the week that anyone in the family can grab. You can also give your overnights a little protein boost by adding a scoop or two of Life Shake™ to the mix. Here are a few of our favorite overnight oats recipes.

Chicken Burrito Bowls

This meal prep recipe can help you make sure you have a healthy lunch at work, school, or home. Each burrito bowl is packed with protein, grains, and plenty of vegetables. And while this recipe uses chicken, feel free to swap it out for the protein of your choice. See the recipe here.

Roasted Vegetable Couscous

This meal is super-filling and packed with veggies like zucchini, tomatoes, bell peppers, and more. You can also pair it with roasted chicken breast or make it vegetarian with chickpeas. See the recipe here.

Mediterranean Chickpea Salad

Salads are great for meal prep since you don’t have to reheat them to enjoy. You’ll love this refreshing summer salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, red onions, feta, parsley, and lemon vinaigrette. Just make sure to keep the vinaigrette separate from your salad and mix it in when you’re ready to eat! See the recipe here.

Life Shake™

Life Shake is a quick and easy way to get 20 grams of non-GMO protein, 6 grams of dietary fiber, and 24 essential vitamins and minerals for breakfast or lunch. Made with pea protein plus a proprietary blend of organic chia and organic pumpkin protein, Life Shake supports energy, satiety, and healthy weight while providing the essential vitamins and minerals to support overall health. In the morning, blend two scoops of Life Shake with your milk of choice or incorporate two scoops into your favorite smoothie recipe.

Make Healthy Happen

While meal prep is a great way to get more nutritious meals into your diet, you can take it a step further by adding a multivitamin to your daily routine. Even the healthiest of diets can lack vital nutrients, and a multivitamin like Vita-Lea® Gummy can help you fill any nutrition gaps in your diet.